CCSID Reference Information

The CCSID (coded character set identifier) consists of a 16-bit number that represents a specific character encoding of a specific code page. For example, Unicode is such a code page that combines several encoding forms under itself, such as UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32.

Further, in addition to the encoding, the CCSID describes a specific set of encoding scheme, character set and code page identifiers and other information that uniquely identifies the encoded graphic character representation.

A coded character set identifier (CCSID) contains all the information necessary to assign and preserve the meaning and representation of characters in the various stages of processing and interchange. This information always comprises at least one code page, but can also comprise several code pages with different byte lengths. These are divided into the "double byte" division for a larger character set and "single byte" for a smaller character set.

The CCSID also has an associated encoding scheme that governs how the various code points are to be handled. This mechanism allows a programme to recognise bidirectional alignment, character shaping (mainly Arabic characters) and other complex encoding information.

In DB2, only the string types of SBCS (single-byte character sets), DBCS (double-byte character sets) and MBCS (multi-byte character sets) are used. The CCSID can be used to distinguish between these string types.